Wednesday, 28 September 2011

About a weekend or two ago, I picked up a good ol' cold virus and took it home to live with me for a while. Didn't mean to, but you know what public transport is like for these things. Anyway, that went about as can be expected and I was starting to feel a little more perky again by the end of the week, albeit with a bit of the Green Snot Of Death looking likely to hang around longer. And then I seemed to come down with another cold.

Colds aren't really a big problem for me, not pleasant of course, but it's just a cold. What is a problem, though, is that Green Snot Of Death. See, it has a nasty habit of lingering and making life unpleasant for months at a time, or until I actually get dragged to a doctor to be prescribed antibiotics.

So there I was, thoroughly miserable, nose dripping and yet somehow also blocked up solid with viscous gunk... feeling very much like I'd been smacked in the face repeatedly with a cricket bat. For extra pain, every time I coughed it felt like I was punching myself in the face from the inside. Painkillers were helping a little, but not enough that I could, say, sleep or anything. Appetite was another issue... it was gone. Completely. That's generally a sign that I'm actually ill, as opposed to just a bit sick, or whatever.

So... time to make an appointment with the doctor, which I did. As luck would have it, I could see $RANDOM_DOCTOR early today and for once I was fine with that (my problems with doctors are fodder for another time...). Better still, I was actually pretty exhausted and thought I might even manage to crash out and sleep.

The previous time I'd fallen asleep, I'd awoken a mere two hours later with that "Sleep? Oh, not for you, sunshine." pain so this time I made sure to have painkillers and a drink handy. I was also starting to feel a little on the over-sweaty side, so I threw on my trusty towelling bathrobe (when I get the sickly sweating, I sweat a LOT and nobody needs to have to hang a mattress out on the line to dry) and settled into bed. I did, indeed, crash out at about half-past ten, and fell asleep... And that's when it all went pear-shaped.

First of all, I'd forgotten to cancel the alarm on my phone that usually reminds me to take my melatonin on a night (my relationship with normal daylight hours is, again, fodder for another time) and that's set for half-eleven. So off it went, waking me up in a state of great confusion, not helped by the pain and a bit of good old fashioned feverishness.

Once I'd worked out what exactly was making the peculiar noises, located and silenced it, well, I was feeling a good deal worse than when I went to bed, but still pretty exhausted, so I flopped back down with the not unreasonable expectation that sleep was still an option. In a quite uncharacteristic turn of events, sleep actually was an option, as I discovered when I found myself experiencing one of those messed up, semi-lucid dreams I seem prone to when a bit under the weather. But never mind, sleep is sleep, so let's call it a win ---

--- and suddenly it's 1am and I'm awake again, in considerably more pain and a sopping wet bathrobe. "Ah, I see." I said to myself, "This is how we're playing this one then. OK." I mean, it's just a cold or two with a bit of bacterial unpleasantness, and I'll be at the doctor's in under nine hours'; all is as OK as it can reasonably be. So a little bed-drenching sweating is an inconvenience, but realistically it's not likely to go on for too long, especially once I get those sweet, sweet antibiotics pitching in with the bacterial thing so the ol' immune system can get back to any remaining viruses. Divide and conquer, and all that.

Best of all, I'd thought ahead! Beside the bed, next to the now thoroughly disgraced and silent phone, was a glass of Pepsi Max and some own-brand Lemsip cold+flu caps. Paracetamol and decongestant, just when I need them and a drink to wet the old whistle, then wash them down with. I was feeling relatively smug at this, which is not all that smug, to be honest. I mean, smug is quite hard to pull off when you're feeling like the victim of repeated cricket bat assaults to the face who has, for some reason, been wrapped in a brine-soaked towel. But, anyway, perhaps that's why it all went pearer-shaped.

I'd taken literally a sip of the delicious Max, then washed the two cold+flu capsules down with a small mouthful of drink when my stomach decided that it was feeling overlooked in the distress department. For a moment I entertained the hope that I might simply need to shamble as quickly as possible to the khazi to, ahem, catch up with some expedited digestion. But no. Oh, no. Apparently that tiny amount of liquid and the painkillers were going to bounce. Furthermore, leisurely shambling was no longer an option. This was going to have to be a frantic lunge.

"Really?" I asked of my gut, as I tried with only moderate success to compensate for the extra weight of my sweat-soaked bathrobe, "We're doing this now?!". "Yes." came the emphatic reply, and the little bastard wasn't kidding either, so off to the bathroom via the intervening door-frames like a squelching, demented pinball it was, where I proceeded to hurl a disgustingly unimpressive amount of pepsi/cold+flu capsules. Over the next fifteen or twenty minutes' worth of blasphemy enriched effort, sweat literally poured off me as my gut expressed its immense displeasure with my 'couple of sips of Max and some pills' antics.

How the hell a stomach can make such a long ordeal out of throwing up basically nothing, I have no idea. It even managed to require two 'goes' at it... I actually kinda passed out against the bathroom wall a little bit between them, but ol' passive aggressive gusty wasn't having that... so up I came for round 2. And up came damn near nothing to show for it.

By the time that was all done with, I was a wreck. Made worryingly pathetic small talk with Olga -- while appetite going may be a warning sign that all is not well with the Adny, when my natural snark has vanished, well... that's bad. It takes a lot to knock the snark out of an Adny. And of course there's precious little anybody can do for somebody else in that condition, so she just propped me up in a corner of the sofa where I drifted into merciful unconsciousness again.

Today is looking much better. Temperature is down to just over a hundred, Green Snot Of Death has been served its first Amoxycillin eviction notice, and I even managed to be interested enough in the concept of a slice of toast to cook, but forget to eat, one. The appetite might be AWOL, but at least the snark is back, much to Olga's relief.

I'm still not quite on speaking terms with ol' gutsy. I mean, when painkillers are what you absolutely need, right there and then, that sort of reaction is just not going to make you popular, now, is it. Perhaps I'll make it a peace offering of a garlic risotto tonight. That'll show it.